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Monday, March 26, 2012

About the recipes...

Let me say right from the start you won't find a lot of original recipes here. I don't believe in re-inventing the wheel. Why bother when there are so many people out there already who do it so well?

When you think of information overload then cookbooks certainly qualify. There are whole stores that are dedicated to just selling cookbooks with specific sections by food, meal ... you name it.

It's not really finding recipes that's the problem the way I see it. It's finding the right recipes that are not only Paleo but easy, quick to make, and taste great .... and getting all that requires a lot of time and effort that many of us just don't have.

So that is why here you will find a lot of recipes that fit that criteria as well as links to where you can find more.

I'm not really bothered about teaching you how to make gourmet meals either. Most of what I will use in my plans is quick and easy, and there is good reason for that. When you use the best quality ingredients you don't need fancy techniques. The food speaks for itself and that is how it should be.

Also, even if it then cooks all day in your slow cooker, you've never going to spend lots of time preparing any of these recipes. If it takes more than half an hour to put together I don't do it and I'm sure you won't either. Maybe for a special occasion, but everyday ... who has the time?

What I want is to create a collection of tried and true recipes that are not only quick and easy to make, but also make the very best of the food you pay your hard earned dollars to buy.

And I am going to concentrate on those recipes that are especially suited to bulk cooking and freezing because it's usually just as easy to cook for 8 as it is for 4, so why not do that and freeze half ... and in the process create another cooking-free day for yourself. These recipes will be marked with (will freeze) in both the recipe and in the menu plans so you will be able to find them easily.

Even though I plan on giving you lots of recipes, I'm sure you will want to supplement with a cookbook or two. There are many good ones on the market and not all of them are Paleo specific. In the future I will be doing some book reviews so you will be able to get a quick overview and decide which ones are for you.

Mark Sisson's Quick and Easy is my favourite at the moment. There are also several others that I think are very good and I will be telling you about them in the future. But there are also many websites and blogs with free recipes which you can use as well.

My favourite authors really don't want to hear this, but you could live very nicely without a single cookbook and just by collecting your favourite recipes from the free offerings online. I tend to do a bit of both, but again it's your choice, taking your budget as well as your tastes into consideration.

So now let's talk a bit about how you're going to organize your recipes once you have them. I've gone through many systems in the years I've been cooking, and they are still all very workable, depending upon your needs and just how into technology you like to be. Here is a brief overview of my recipe collecting history to give you some ideas that you can consider.

To begin with there were the cute little recipe boxes with their neatly labeled dividers. They looked very neat and organized on my kitchen bookcase but unfortunately weren't very practical.

Not many of the recipes I found fit on those cards, and the ones that did I needed a magnifying glass to read, so I didn't tend to use them much. For someone with better eyesight they would probably be fine.

I used my recipe books a lot more, but after years of use a lot of them were in pretty bad shape. I found to my regret that tomato sauce and butter stains really don't do much to improve a book's appearance.

My first solution was to cut a plastic page protector down one side to create pocket, then slip that over the open page of my book while I used it. Most of the splatters could then be wiped off which worked quite well.

Once I'd done that for a while I decided to keep all my recipes in plastic page protectors in binders. (The picture on the left is similar to the one I used.) This worked very well for many years and the tomato and butter stains were easily removed with a wet rag.

Whenever I wanted a recipe I just removed it from the binder, clipped it to this cute little stand my son made me in kindergarden out of clothes pins and painted to look like a giraffe, and proceeded with my cooking. Once finished I wiped the plastic clean and replaced it in my binder.

Now I've gotten to stage three in my life. These days I'm all about simplicity and technology and I try to make use of both as much as possible.

I've scanned all my favorite recipes into computer files. I have to say even after several decades it really wasn't that big a job because most of the recipes I used for years I don't use any longer now that I eat Paleo.

I've also bought the kindle version of a few Paleo recipe books that I really like, and now I use my iPad in the kitchen. (seems charsweb.com has the same idea as you can see by the photo) It wipes just as nicely as the plastic pages did in the past but holds a lot more information in a much smaller amount of space.

And when I travel my iPad easily comes with me to provide me with my favorite recipes wherever I go. Isn't technology wonderful!

I don't know where you are on the scale of simple to complicated with your recipe organization but I hope it's closer to the simple. If you are just starting I definitely recommend keeping it all online.

The iPhone works wonderfully as well - that is for people with better eye sight then mine and nimble fingers. Mine haven't quite got the hang of the tiny keyboard yet - but I'm getting there!

At firstand20.com they recommend keeping it in a plastic bag to keep it clean and claim the phone works just fine in there. Funny really. Kind of like the plastic page protectors I used what seems like eons ago all over again.

All of this rambling on is really just to say you do need some kind of method of keeping your favourite recipes where you can easily use them. Decide on something, try it, and if it doesn't work out, try something else. There are lots of methods to choose from, including just storing them on a shelf that tucks away under your kitchen cupboard like this example below.

“Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.” - George Bernard Shaw

Want to try Paleo, but .....

... think it's too hard to do?

... don't have enough information?

... don't know where to start?

.

My STEP-BY-STEP PALEO ebook course makes it Easy !

I show you exactly what to do Step by Step,I give you lots of great Recipes,and I make it Fun !

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